Beyond Love (Imperfect Heroes Book 4) Read online

  By C.J. Pinard

  Pinard House Publishing, LLC

  Copyright 2017 © C.J. Pinard

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Acknowledgements:

  Cover by Kellie Dennis @ Book Cover by Design

  Photography by Lindee Robinson Photography

  Cover Models: Travis Bendall and Hailey Danhausen

  Copyedits: Amabel Daniels

  Dedication:

  This is for every member of the U.S. armed forces. Thank you for defending my sorry ass and risking your lives and limbs so we can all be free. After all, freedom really isn’t free. God bless you!

  PROLOGUE

  Ten Years Ago

  The warm, Florida sun shone down on them as they sat together in the soft grass. Their fingers were intertwined, his gripping hers with the perfect amount of tenderness and firm protectiveness. He ran his thumb along the curves of her tanned fingers. Looking into her big, love-struck brown eyes, he gazed long and hard into them. “I love you, Little Flower.”

  She smiled back, her neck craned up to gaze into his mossy green stare. “I love you, too, Ky.”

  “Will you be here for me always?” he asked.

  Her full, plump lips lifted into a grin. “Of course, babe.”

  Leaning down, and with his hand firmly on the back of her head, he pressed his mouth to hers, their lips and tongues mingling in perfect sync like they always did.

  She pulled back reluctantly to look up at the only boy she’d ever loved. The only one she’d ever given everything to.

  There was a questioning in his eyes, a curiosity mixed with excitement. She recognized the change right away.

  Slowly, she asked, “What is it?”

  He grinned, those green eyes matching the grass they sat on. “You always could read me so well.”

  Her smile faltered a little. Something about the air around them shifted. She searched his face for answers.

  With that grin still on his ridiculously rugged but boyish face, Ky replied, “I’ve enlisted in the Marines.”

  Blinking in disbelief, her lips parted slightly as she stared into his hopeful eyes. “What did you just say?”

  “I was hoping you’d support me. Be there for me,” he replied, grabbing her soft hands in his.

  Adria pulled them away, fear and shock now coloring her face. “No! You can’t do this, Kyle. Please. We were going to stay here in Tampa and go to college together. I’m already enrolled at the junior college for the nursing program. You know this!”

  “It’s done, Adria. I talked to a recruiter yesterday and signed papers. I feel strongly I’m meant to join the Marine Corps.”

  She untangled herself from him and stood up. She absently brushed grass from the blue skirt of her cheerleader’s uniform. With tears glistening along the edge of her bottom lashes, the sun’s rays caught the first one that fell and cascaded down her cheek. In a cracked voice, she whispered, “I can’t believe you’re leaving me.”

  Kyle also stood, took off his letterman’s jacket with the multiple varsity patches, and threw it over his shoulder. His tall frame dwarfed hers, casting a shadow over her entire body. He looked down, gripping her small, sad face in his palms and said, “I’m not leaving you. In fact, I was hoping you would be there for me—with me—while I do this.”

  She shook her head, her long, brown ponytail swishing back and forth like a horse’s tail. She whimpered, “You could go to war and die! Die, Kyle! I can’t believe you’re doing this to me!”

  Ky used his fingers to tip her face up toward him. “I’m not doing anything to you. I’m doing this for us, Little Flower. I can’t go to college, and I don’t want to. The only reason I’ve got barely passing grades right now is because I wanted to keep playing ball, and even then my dad had to get me a tutor because I’m a dumbass. Schoolwork is hard for me. I have no interest in four more years of it. The only thing I want to do is put on a uniform and be all I can be.” He threw her a lopsided smile.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “That’s what the Army says.”

  He chuckled. “Oops. Okay, then I know they’re looking for a few good men. And I want to be one of them.”

  She huffed out a sigh and swiped at her wet face with the back of her hand. “Then this isn’t going to work. I love you, but I can’t be away from you and try to be in a relationship, too.”

  Kyle nodded. “I know. I will go to boot camp for a few months, and when I get back, we can get married and then you can just move with me wherever I’m stationed.”

  Adria dropped the bottle of Sprite she’d been holding and it fell to the grass and rolled away.

  Her large brown eyes widened. “Married? Are you crazy?”

  A smile twitched up on his mouth as he reached out for her once again. “Only crazy about you, baby.”

  She took a step back and shook her head, not appreciating his lightheartedness in such a deep conversation. Her face was now flushed red with anger. “And anyway, what kind of marriage proposal was that?”

  “It wasn’t a marriage proposal, it was a suggestion. You can go to nursing school wherever I’m stationed.”

  She breathed in deep, trying to stay the sob that wanted to jerk free from her chest. “I don’t want to leave Tampa. I grew up here. My family is here. I can’t just leave them—and I don’t want to!”

  “Even for me?” he pled.

  “I love you, Ky, but please, don’t do this. Find a job in town or something. My dad can get you a job at the shop…”

  He raked his fingers through his shaggy blond hair and huffed in growing frustration. “I don’t want to be a diesel mechanic, Adria. I want to be a Marine.”

  “Don’t you love me?” she asked, sniffling.

  He reached down and grasped both her cheeks with his hands once again, and this time, she didn’t pull away. “More than anything. I need you.”

  “Then stay. Please! We’ve been together for two years, and now you’re throwing all of that away. I can’t sit back while you go off to God knows where and I sit here wondering if you’re even still alive. I just can’t…”

  He blew out a breath as he dropped his hands from her face. Shaking his head, he murmured, “This conversation is going nowhere.”

  “It doesn’t look like we are going to agree on this,” Adria said quietly as she swallowed down more tears.

  “No, we’re not. Take a few days to think about it. For now, I’m outta here.” Kyle, now angry and hurt, turned and headed away from the football field and from her with his blue and gold letterman’s jacket slung over his shoulder.

  Adria stood on the grassy hill, watching the only boy she’d ever loved go, and whispered through her tears, “It’s all one big lie. Love really isn’t enough.”

  With a heavy sadness, she rotated on the heel of her white tennis shoe and began the short walk home.

  As Kyle turned around, he saw Adria begin to retreat slowly in the opposite direction. The only thing he knew was that he absolutely powerless to do anything but watch his first love walk away with his shattered heart.

  As a few days floated into weeks, and then months, and then years, she never changed her mind. But then agai
n, neither did he.

  Chapter 1

  Adria

  Present Day

  There are some people you just can’t fix. Some are just beyond repair, and then there are those who rise above the pain and brokenness and shine through the darkness.

  Pain wasn’t anything I wasn’t used to. My job was to help people though theirs, not feel it myself. I don’t like feeling pain… who does, really… and it had been ten years since I’d felt the gut-wrenching agony of loss. I was in no hurry to experience that again. Nevertheless, here I was, nursing the sting of yet another rejection.

  This one was different, though. Gage’s betrayal was an odd sort of pain. One invoking anger and rage. Hadn’t I done everything for him? Hadn’t I been the perfect fiancée? No, apparently, I hadn’t—and there was nothing I could do about that now.

  I couldn’t quite dissect why Gage’s behavior had hit a different sort of nerve than the pain of my high school boyfriend leaving me ten years ago had, but it did. It was odd, and foreign, and while I wanted to analyze it, I had a job to do. A job with a paycheck that would allow me to keep my head above water and show me that I didn’t need a man in my life to prove that I was a strong, independent woman.

  I tossed the medical chart into the plastic slot set into the wall and shoved the pen behind my ear as I walked into Room 322.

  “Hi, Nurse Adria,” I heard a small voice say.

  I looked up to see my patient, Jenna, lying in the sterile hospital bed. Jenna was in her late teens, her leg set in a bulky cast from a car accident she’d been in last week. I pulled my iPad Mini from the pouch I wore it in around my waist and started typing into it.

  “Hi, Jenna. How are you feeling today?”

  She forced a smile, but I could tell there was pain behind it. “My leg aches pretty bad, but… I… I don’t want to complain.”

  I waved a dismissive hand. “Complain all you want. It would suck to wear that all the time.” I pointed at her cast, which was propped up from a contraption wired to the ceiling, and she smiled.

  “Yeah, it does. I just want to get out of the hospital already. I have a life, ya know.”

  I grinned. “I hear ya. All those cute boys, so little time.”

  She giggled with a blush. “Something like that.”

  Typing some more into the iPad, I finished that and then took her vitals.

  “Everything is good. You need some more medication?” I asked, staring into her pained blue eyes.

  She nodded. “Yeah, I guess.”

  I changed the IV bags and injected some medicine into her IV for instant relief. Along with the broken femur, she had a pretty nasty gash on her head and multiple cuts on her face, shoulder, and arm.

  “I’ll be back later to check on ya. Okay, kiddo?”

  She nodded and picked up the remote attached to the hospital bed and turned her attention toward the TV.

  Heading back out to the nurses’ station, I sighed and tried to concentrate on my next patient and not dwell on the fact that Jenna probably wouldn’t be quite the same after her car accident.

  “Which one is first?” I heard a familiar, deep, rich voice say.

  I stiffened and twisted around slightly to see my ex-fiancé standing at the nurses’ station with his hand out, waiting for the next chart.

  “I guess you can take this one?” the new nursing intern said, smoothing some blonde hair behind her ear while batting her eyelashes at Gage.

  He leaned an elbow on the nurses’ station and ran his finger along his lip, staring into her eyes. I watched with rage as his gaze moved to her nametag, then to her face. “Why, thank you, Madison. You are doing a great job, keep it up.”

  She swallowed hard and laughed nervously. “Thank you, Gage.”

  I snorted loudly and walked away, disgusted that I had ever been in love with, let alone engaged to, that womanizing ass-hat. I could feel his eyes on my backside. I wasn’t stupid; I knew he talked to and flirted with everything with a vagina just to make me jealous. Well I wasn’t. Let him be someone else’s problem.

  This was what I told myself to get over him faster. I didn’t need that heartache or stress in my life. I had a great career, enough money to support myself, and a best friend who had found love herself recently, and I had hopes I would, too, one day.

  That got me thinking about Ky again. It seemed like every time I would think about lost love and disappointment, it wasn’t Gage’s face I would see in my mind, it was Ky’s. We’d had such a horrible, heartbreaking breakup, that in a way, I felt like we never really got much closure.

  Then last week, I came face to face with him at a barbeque. Turned out we have mutual friend—and that he was now newly employed, working for my best friend, Harper. As if that wasn’t shocking enough, he knew a whole damn circle of friends I sometimes associated with. Tampa was turning out to be a huge city with a small town social circle. One I wished was a lot bigger.

  Chapter 2

  Kyle

  I’ve learned that if you don’t choose humility, it will, in time, eventually choose you.

  I dipped my head and breathed through the phantom pain. When would it end? They told me this would happen, that I would get ‘discomfort’ in my leg where it wasn’t. It was an odd sort of agony that I couldn’t even begin to describe with words.

  Hearing a yell, I look up toward the shallow end of the glittering blue swimming pool and see my son’s head pop up out of the pool as I treaded water in the deep end. I used my arms and the strength from my right leg to keep me afloat. The top half of my left leg kind of just swished back and forth like a paddle, and I found it helped some when I thought it would be useless.

  “I swam underwater, Daddy!” Luke said, holding onto the side of the pool, a big smile on his dripping face.

  “Good job, buddy,” I said, still treading water.

  “Can I swim to you?” he asked.

  Nervous, but needing to perfect my aquatic skills, I nodded and put one arm out, beckoning him. “Sure, son. Swim to me. Make sure you kick those legs!”

  He smiled and ducked under the water, and I watched as he made like a dolphin and wiggled his way toward me under the surface. He came up for air but then ducked back under. Finally reaching me, I pulled him into the crook of my right arm and used my left to paddle us toward the edge.

  I eventually sat him up on the cement edge as I held on and praised him. “Good job!”

  “Thanks, Dad!” Luke beamed.

  “Dad?” I said, “You’re five, surely you’re not done calling me ‘Daddy’?”

  He laughed, his blue eyes sparkling. “Okay, Daddy.”

  I stared into his eyes and then at his bright orange hair and again marveled at how much he looked like his mother. I tried to stuff down the anger that wanted to rise when I thought about Marissa. The anger would be useless anyway, since I had no idea where she was. When I’d gotten out of the Marines almost two years ago, she took off and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. She had said she was going to visit her mother, but had just left us.

  The worst part was fielding questions from Luke. It got tiring telling him I didn’t know where she was or when she’d be back. And the lie, “Of course she loves you, Luke” when he’d ask, just so I wouldn’t have to break a five-year-old’s heart.

  Stupid, selfish bi–

  I heard my phone ring from where my clothes lay on the covered deck and slowly made my way out of the pool. Using a towel I set at the water’s edge, I dried my left leg just enough to pop the prosthetic back on so I could hobble my way over to my phone. “No going back in until I get off the phone,” I told my son, turning my head to look at him still sitting on the pool’s edge.

  “But I’m cold,” he said.

  I snorted and shook my head. August in Florida. He’d warm up in about thirty seconds.

  I slammed the phone to my ear after swiping the screen. “Hello?”

  “What’s up?” I could hear Duke’s voice on the other end of the line. He h
ad a mouthful of gum, his new habit since quitting tobacco, and I could tell he was shuffling papers around.

  “Doing good, how are things there?” I asked.

  “Can’t say much. The house okay?”

  I towel-dried my short hair. “Yep, same. Everything in the neighborhood is calm as can be. We’re just swimming. Hot as hell out here.”

  “You watching your boy around my pool?” The same question he always asked.

  I chuckled. “Well he’s floating face down at the bottom and not moving. Is that a bad sign?”

  “Goddammit, Adams, that’s not funny!”

  I laughed again. “Yes he’s fine.”

  “Daddy, can I go in the Jacuzzi?” Luke yelled.

  I looked over to see him get up from the cement edge of the pool. “Yes, son. Hey, walk, don’t run!”

  Duke said something that was muffled, and then replied. “Well that’s good. Make sure you mow the grass. Damn rain, I can’t keep up. Wait, you can do that, right?”

  I rolled my eyes. “If I can walk, I can push a mower, you asshole.”

  He laughed, a deep but rare rumbling chuckle. “Okay, man. Well I gotta go.”

  “Any idea when you’ll be back?”

  “Yeah, a week from Tuesday. It’s a short trip this time.”

  I watched as Luke slowly made his way into the attached hot tub. “Okay. Need me to check on your girl too while you’re gone?”

  “Don’t you fucking go near her, Adams.”

  I tilted my head back with a laugh. “Okay, okay. Just checking. Thought she might need some help in her condo.”

  “I got that shit.” He chomped on his gum. “When I get back I have to fix her fuckin’ garbage disposal.”

  “Okay talk to you soon. I’ll make sure the house is perfect for you when you return.”

  He grunted something and then hung up.

  I loved that angry bastard. Served with him in Afghanistan a few years ago. Dude had had a piece of shrapnel stuck in his leg from an IED explosion, and was lucky he still had the leg after they’d removed the metal. Walked with a limp, but not the same limp I had. He now worked for the FBI and had to travel a lot after getting in a little trouble a few months ago because of some excessive force.